Memory & Perception Flashcards
What is Pragnanz and what theoretical family does it belong to?
It’s the idea that experience will be organised as meaningful, symmetrical and simple whenever possible. (This is the fundamental idea of Gestalt psychology).
What are the 7 ways in which we execute pragnanz, according to Gestalt?
- Closure (filling in the gaps to complete a picuture that seems obvious)
- Proximity (tendency to group things based on how close they are)
- Continuation (create figures based on our expectation rather than what is seen)
- Similarity (tendency to group things based on how similar they seem to us)
- Symmetry (tendency to group things based on how similar they seem to us)
- Constancy (the tendency to percieve objects in a way that we are familiar with)
- Minimum principle (the tendency to see what is easiest or most logical)
Anne Treisman amended the filter model of attention to the 1 model of attention. This model introduces a pehmonea called 2, which accounts for 3?
- Attenuated
- Cocktail party effect
- the ability of a person in a conversation to detect their name (or something salient) across the room.
Broadbent’s filter model of attention believes that inforamtion, which is not 1 will be 2 and 3?
- attended to
- filtered out
- decays
Describe Structuralist Theory?
The thoery asserts that perception is the sum total of sensory input and focusses on the bottom-up processing.
Describe Gestalt Theory/Psychology.
Gestalt asserts that people tend to see the world in terms of organised wholes rather than constituent parts, focussing on top-down processing.
What is proprioception?
Cognitive awareness of where our bodies are in space at any given time.
What provides muscle memory?
spindles (receptors)
What are the 2 types of sensory corpuscles?
- Meissners - touch or contact of skin
- Pacinian - displacement of skin
What is Nativist Theory?
The perception theory that asserts that perception and cognition are largely innate and genetically based.
Humans are born with all perceptual capacities - some present at birth and some develop as the person matures.
What is Empiricist Theory?
Believes that perception is basically learned and develops as the individual adapts to their environment.
What are the 3 thresholds for stimulus detection?
- Absolute threshold - minimun amount of stimulus detected 50% of the time.
- Differential threshold - (Just Noticeable Difference) the minimum difference that must occur between 2 stimuli in order for them to be perceived as different intensities.
- Terminal threshold - the upper limit above which the stimuli can no longer be perceived.
What are the four types of reasoning?
- Convergent thinking
- Divergent thinking
- Deductive reasoning
- Inductive reasoning
What suggests that people make choices based on their personal preferences?
Utility theory
What is another name for Reaction Time? And what does it mean?
- Latency
- the measure of cognitive processing
Explain the Stroup Effect.
Explains the decreased speed of naming the color of ink used to print a word when the color of ink and the word itself are different colors.
List and describe the main two theories which suggest the origin of forgetting.
- Decay theory (trace theory): posits tht memorie fade with time
- Interference theory: suggests that competing information blocks retrieval
What are the 7 ideas of Gestalt theory in line with Pragnanz?
- Closure
- Proximity
- Continuation
- Symmetry
- Similarity
- Constancy
- Minimum principle
What are the 6 concepts of depth perception?
- Binocular disaprity
- Apparent size
- Interposition
- Linear perspective
- Texture gradiant
- Motion parallax
Who developed the visual cliff?
Gibson and Walk
List the 5 types of classic illusions…
- Ambiguous figures
- Figure-ground reversal
- Impossible objects
- Moon illusion
- Phi phenomenon
What is the auto-kinetic effect?
A single source of light in the dark will appear to move because it is our eyes that are moving.
Who is famous for the place-resonance theory and what is it?
- Hermann von Helmholtz
- It’s a theory of sound perception, in which different parts of hte basilar membrane respond to different frequencies.
Describe sound localisation…
the degree to which one of our ears hears a sound prior to and more intensely than the other can give us infromation about the origin of the sound.
Who proposed opponent-color or opponent-process theory and what is it?
- Ewald Hering
- Suggests that 2 types of colour-sensitive cells exist: cones that respond to yellow-blue or green-red. When one pair is stimulated, the other is inhibited. This is also how we get afterimage.
*present in the lateral geniculate body
Who developed the trichromatic theory for color vision? And what does it posit?
- von Helmholtz and Young
- there are three receptors in the retina: red, blue or green
- present in the retina
Lateral inhibition allows the eye to see ___ and prevents ____ being sent to the brain.
- contrast
- repetitive information
Who discovered that cells in the visual cortex are so complex and specialised that they only respond to certain types of stimuli. Like right angles or vertical lines etc.
Hubel and Wiesel
What’s the difference between Meissner’s and Pacinian corpuscles?
Meissner’s: receptors that detect touch or contact.
Pacinian: respond to displacement of skin.
What do we call the temperature that is sensed as neither warm or cold?
Physiological zero
What do osmoreceptors do?
They deal with feelings of thirst.
What is the Melzack and Wall’s Gate Control Theory of Pain?
Sees pain as a process rather than a simple sensation. Asserts that pain perception is related to the interaction of large and small nerve fibers that run to (afferent) and from (efferent) the spine
What sense allows us to orient ourselves in space and maintain balance?
Vestibular
What sense provides us awareness of our movements and uses spindles to provide muscle memory?
Kinesthetic
Explain Baddeley’s model of working memory
A Central Executive oversees the following three capacities
- Phonological loop
- Episodic buffer
- Visio-spatial sketch pad
This all flows into long-term memory stores
Which theory suggests that we can hold no more than 7 +/- 2 pieces of information at any given time
Displacement theory
Describe Implicit v Explicit memory
Implicit (nondeclaratve)
1. Procedural memory
2. Conditioned memory
Explicit (declarative)
1. Episodic
2. Semantic
List the key researchers in memory retrieval.
- Bartlett: found that memory is reconstructive, not rote
- Craik & Lockhart found that memory and learning depend on depth of processing
- Loftus found that traumatic memories are altered by the experience itself
- Loftus & Collins suggested that people have heirarchical networks in their memory
Who created the Forgetting Curve?
Ebbinghaus
What are the four types of verbale learning?
- Serial learning
- Serial-anticipation learning
- Paired-associate learning
- Free-recall learning
What is Hebb best known for?
The process of Long Term Potentiation and the concept that ‘neurons that fire together wire together’
What is the Zeigarnik effect?
the tendency to recall uncompleted tasks better than completed ones.
Who asserted that people make decisions about their relationships by searching their cognitive semantic hierarchies?
Collins & Quillian
